Is the word "clinic", as in a basketball clinic, a natural and "warm" choice compared to alternatives such as "camp" and "program"? [closed]

I'm developing a website for a client who provides physical education programs for elementary schools. The client frequently uses the word clinic to refer to his more targeted sports programs for kids, e.g. a basketball clinic. Of course the client is referring to the following definition (from Merriam Webster online):

a group meeting devoted to the analysis and solution of concrete problems or to the acquiring of specific skills or knowledge <writing clinics> <golf clinics>

However, this usage feels unnatural to me. I've only heard the word clinic used in the context of hospitals, patient care facilities, laboratories, and the like. I worry that the imagery triggered by the word clinic is not as "warm" as alternative words like camp, course, and program. From a marketing perspective, I feel that an alternative word should be used.

I'm asking on English.SE in case I'm simply ignorant, or at least ignorant to a difference of language in generations. That is, I'm in my mid-20s, my client is in his 30s or 40s, and the target audience would be in the client's age group: parents, teachers, principals, and coaches. Given that I'd like to use their generation's language, is clinic a more natural choice?

I'm 65, and I sympathize with your distaste for the term in this context, so I don't think this is a matter of age cohorts.

A clinic, as you recognize, is not a warm and welcoming place for healthy recreation, but an intense and demanding program of professional coaching. And although I find it revolting that clinics should be offered for elementary school pupils, I’m afraid your client has a more cynical sense of his market than you and I might like.

There are all too many parents out there who are hypercompetitive on behalf (nominally) of their children. For these it is not enough for their children to enjoy sport: the children must excel at sport, must be “given every opportunity” to develop technical skills by which they may outstrip their peers. They must, in short, emulate their parents' drive to succeed.

So there is your market for clinics. And it is likely to be a particularly lucrative component of your client's marketing plan: for it is the nature of the beast that the parents who adopt this attitude are those most likely to command the resources, or most willing to make the sacrifices, which enable them to pay through the nose in hopes of realizing their vicarious ambitions.

Clinic is not a “natural and warm” term. It’s not supposed to be.

Let me hasten to add that such clinics are not peculiar to athletics; they are also to be found, and deplored, in the performing arts. For all I know there are even elementary-school clinics for chess, mathematics, and subatomic physics. I somehow doubt, however, that they exist for writers and linguists and such merely intellectual riff-raff.

Clinic is a perfectly valid term for use in a professional venue when assessing a problem with a particular skill and then finding remediation for it. The term is well used when addressing a particular and well scoped issue such as "hooking the golf shot" or "getting tongue tied" when attempting to deliver an elevator pitch.

The goal of a clinic is to identify the root causes of the under-performance and then to find specific steps to reduce or eliminate that problem. It is a results oriented term and is intended to product a specific and measurable outcome.

The question about the "warmth" of the term strikes me as a little off the mark as when it comes to skills there is nothing "warmer" than eliminating a problem in your skill set.